Good morning. Today we look at one part of motherhood that isn’t often discussed – more on mental health and childbirth below, along with election updates from the U.S. and Britain. But first:

• Ottawa will pull the plug on a trouble-plagued Arctic naval facility that was intended to be a show of sovereignty in the North
• One of Canada’s largest construction unions will face a probe after a Globe investigation revealed the purchase of a $4-million home
• Can Marco Rubio repair the rift between Donald Trump, Pope Leo XIV and Giorgia Meloni?

Hi, I’m Ann Hui, The Globe’s generations reporter. I write often about parenting – about fertility rates and why people do and don’t have kids, parenting in the digital age and the specific challenges of motherhood.

And, with Mother’s Day just around the corner, I wanted to highlight one piece of motherhood that doesn’t always get attention: the impact of childbirth on mothers.

When 36-year-old Melissa Desmarais arrived at the hospital in Montreal in 2022 to deliver her first child, she had little idea of what to expect. Obviously she knew it would be painful and difficult. But she wasn’t expecting trauma.

A report released this week details the rarely discussed, but oftentimes severe physical and mental health impact that childbirth can have on mothers. This can range from shock and emotional trauma to severe and long-lasting physical injuries.

The report, commissioned by Toronto personal injury law firm Neinstein LLP and conducted by Fuse Insights, surveyed 1,000 women across Canada who have given birth in the past three years.

The results are sobering: Almost half (46 per cent) said that the experience affected their mental health; 44 per cent said that, even years later, they were still anxious as a result.

And, crucially, about one-third of respondents said they felt dismissed or ignored by their medical teams, and that their pain and anxiety were not taken seriously.

In her Montreal hospital bed that day, Desmarais felt the intensity building quickly. She asked for an epidural, but was told no, that it was far too early. What her medical team didn’t realize was that Desmarais was having something called a precipitous labour, a birth that progresses extraordinarily rapidly.

As she repeatedly told the doctors and nurses that she was in intense pain, that something felt wrong, she said they ignored her.

“They weren’t taking me seriously,” she said. “There was just this idea that ‘We’re the medical professionals. We know what we’re doing.’”

Finally, when the pain became unbearable, when Desmarais was screaming at the top of her lungs for help, a nurse came over and realized that the baby’s head was already on its way out. Her son was born just 10 minutes later.

The experience, she said, left her in shock. It wasn’t just the pain she’d experienced, but the feeling of having her agency taken away. In this most crucial and vulnerable of moments, she was made to feel powerless.

These challenges, the report found, are exacerbated when it comes to women from BIPOC communities. In the United States, Black women are three times more likely to die from childbirth than non-Black women. (Canada does not collect similar race-based data).

As part of her master’s research, perinatal advocate Cheyenne Scarlett interviewed Black mothers across Canada about their labour and delivery, and heard experiences ranging from bias and dismissal to flat-out racism. She said even simple requests, like asking for a private room after delivery, sometimes went ignored by medical teams who assumed the patients couldn’t pay for them.

“Giving birth, in general, is a lot,” Scarlett said. “But when you have these other compounding identities” – if you’re Black, or Indigenous, or single, or English is your second language – “it’s so much worse.”

It took Desmarais some time before she was able to describe her experience. Women, she said, are taught not to complain. And mothers, especially, are taught to be grateful so long as their baby is born healthy.

“I didn’t feel like I was allowed to say it was traumatic and hard,” she said. “It was like, ‘Well, look around, everyone does it. Get over it.’”

All of this, said Rose Leto, a partner at Neinstein, points to crucial gaps in the health-care system. Women enter into hospital labour and delivery units ill-equipped and unprepared, and then find themselves ignored or left out of crucial conversations surrounding their own bodies.

“When nearly half of the women surveyed are telling us that this experience affected their mental health,” she said, “it’s clear that we need to do something.” Both Leto and Scarlett called for clearer communication and a more patient-centred approach by health-care providers – to properly explain what’s happening throughout the process, and to actively listen when patients have questions or concerns.

“You can’t change the medical outcome. You can’t predict or change whether it’s a C-section or whether there are complications,” said Leto. “But you can help prepare the mom for what to expect, and to be there to support her.”